With the doors of one of Denver’s most spectacular exhibitions of the year having been open for just over a month, Brilliant: Cartier in the 20th Century has already brought worldwide attention to the Denver Art Museum (DAM).
Concepting the exhibition
Condit is pleased to have executed much of the exhibition build, based off of Nathalie Crinière exhibit design. The exhibition is home to roughly 250 of Cartier’s most spectacular and coveted jewels, timepieces and luxury items. Crinière’s design and Condit’s execution reflects the magnificence of these pieces by way of richly colored theme rooms, stylistic era-specific organization, and dramatic display units and configurations. As the visitor makes their way through a temporal journey of treasures, the exhibition offers a rich backdrop that parallels each of Cartier’s eras and corresponding themes.
Condit’s museum build and installation process
Here at our Denver headquarters, Condit’s engineers and team of craft woodworkers used Crinière’s design to build the custom walls, moldings and create vinyl graphics for display areas and themed rooms. What would eventually make up the curved, winding walls of the Age of Glamour section and the viewing wall for Art of Smoking era display were built in-house. These walls were then dismantled and transported to the museum. There they were re-erected and painted in the DAM’s Anschutz and Martin and McCormick galleries. Condit also installed fabric canopies and viewing cases for the Icons of Style area, as well as overhead light boxes in the Exotic Fantasy room.
The exhibition at a glance
Brilliant: Cartier in the 20th Century is strikingly impressive in breadth and size, having transformed a multitude of galleries into one giant voyage, cataloguing Cartier’s response to cultural rises and falls for over 60 of Cartier’s most formative years.
The visitor is charmed by visions of the golden age Fin de Ciècle in 1900 Paris and New York, the intoxicating glamour of the roaring 20’s and the Art Deco and Hollywood eras, the cultural inspiration of the Ballets Russes, the royalty of India and the rich decorative motifs of China. The exhibition transforms the visitor into a flâneur, peeking into shop vitrines and ogling magnificent display cases. The exhibition is not only a show of immense vision, artistry, mastery and splendor, but also such a show of seamless and brilliant collaboration in execution.
Images courtesy of the Denver Art Museum